Argument:The movie is structured around a very humanist and socialist perspective of those members of our society that are being abused by corporations. The argument for the movie really is that corporations and banking have infiltrated government, not just through lobbying, and when combined with complex strategies for manipulating credit and . The same people, that for the majority of their lives have held positions on boards of directors for large multinational companies, are being placed in pubic office by elected officials with conflicting interest. What results is the government gives corporations rights similar to that of an individual, as established by the US Constitution, and makes it possible for corporations to push around consumers and employees due to the failures of our legal and banking systems.
Problems:There are no direct environmental concerns that are drawn out in this film, however these issues are probably the key element to why change at the scale required is failing. The film gives a great deal of time to the economic crash caused by defunct loans. However, what they attempt to draw out is that while people's lives and homes are being destroyed by bankruptcy, banks have been running money through a variety of apparently legal, because the regulators are economists and part of big business, lending schemes. But again the human factor was really stressed in this film. Sully Sulenburg, the media pronounced American Hero after landing his US Airways jet safely in the Hudson, used his new fame to bring to light the poor treatment of pilots in the aviation industry. The system takes advantage of what an individual loves to do as a career, giving pilots approximately 20,000 dollars a year in salary. This suggests that the mantra repeated to children in America that “you can do whatever you want to do” and “do something you love” is actually not the reality. Another outrageous issue brought up is the purchasing of life insurance policies by companies for their employees. An example is Paul Smith, an employee of Walmart whose wife, also an entry level employee of Walmart, died leaving the family with 100,000 in medical and funeral expenses. Smith then discovered Walmart had taken a policy out on his wife for 81,000 dollars and offered none of it to the family.
Persuasive:Moore appears to be an excellent investigative reporter and strings together a variety of topics very fluidly and in a well timed manner. I thought the pace of the movie was excellent, as part of these films is about letting information sink in and affect the viewer. The beginning was filled with very moving personal issues and as the movie progressed the scale of topics grew, moving into specific coroporate and banking strategies and then wrapping up the whole movie with the failure of government. Specifically I was shocked by a part of the movie which describes a memo distributed through the ranks of Citibank which describes our nation as that of a plutonomy. Apparently Citibank had estimated that only 1% of America owned the majority of the countries wealth, but that 95% were in the lower class after taking into account loans and mortgages. This meant that the booming American middle class, of which advertising would have us suggest is still alive and well only belongs to 4% of the population.
Not Compelled:While Moore's reporting and material collaging is excellent, his antics don't fit within the context of the film. They are so childish and pointless that they undermine the criticality of the message. Also, while the stories in the beginning of the film are quite touching and unbelievable, the individuals shown are clearly depicted as victims. But, there is a certain amount of individual responsibility in these issues that question how they got into that situation that isn't addressed.
Audience:I thought that this film was geared towards the general American public. It was not at all highly technical, and really was attempting to grasp hold of the attention of that lower class that was single out in the Citibank document as the people who have a majority voice and can vote for change. The film doesn't address the actual issues of voting that prevent people wrapped up in these detrimental systems from actually getting to the polls, which would be an interesting topic of discussion. I believe the film was supposed to enhance already growing suspicions that individuals had, and the theories being posed are just so unbelievable that many would pass it off as false or slander.
Enhancement:As I described earlier, the film was less of a direct environmental action film and more of a film attempting to pull out issues of humanity that are necessary to the movement. If a country or society cannot live together and have a general respect amongst our own kind, how are we supposed to tackle the problems facing the environment. What could have been added was some sort of mention of how climate change was being influenced by these poor practices.
Intervention:The film really only acts as a call to attention and doesn't offer any really solid guidance. The general theme that remains at the end is that the elite are scared by the prospect of the masses of lower class individuals being able to vote and actually push responsible politicians through to responsible positions. There is a major issue with this though in that there are so many societal pressures against voting that it makes it impossible for many lower class families to actually participate in decision making. Voting day is supposed to be an essential point for critical decision making for the future of our country but it isn't treated as such. Instead of treating it as a federal holiday, where we all voice our concerns and celebrate the nation in that way, we go about our busy corporate driven lives probably purchasing more non-essential goods in that single day than votes cast. It is the same reason why the “vote by what you buy” technique doesn't actually function because lower income families are too busy working to get minimum amounts of money to 1) actually afford good food and products and 2) put energy into cooking with them. Perhaps election day should be a celebrated event by the country, but not in the way we commercialize and celebrate the nation's “birthday.” This would require all schools, government, and businesses to close allowing everyone to go vote, but also build community participation back into the actual day.
Additional Info:
1]I was primarily shocked in this film by the Citibank memo that was released describing the country as a Plutonomy. I found the article and read through it and it's something that everyone should read. Specifically of interest to me were the blatant admittance to doing detrimental run-around schemes to create complex essentially laundering schemes. “Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist-friendly cooperative governments, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting
2] I also became interested in the history of election day and discovered a major flaw that has not been accounted for in the voting procedures over the centuries, since industrialization. Voting in America was established and conducted through the first 100 years of the country's existence by an agrarian society. They were self-sufficient communities that were self operational and voting required often a full day or more's travel. It was a major amount of effort to participate in the system which has been lost as corporations and our economic system now locks people into the working day, making it difficult to actually participate on a random day in November, also one of the busiest times for seasonal shopping preparations.
Title: Capitalism: A Love Story
Director: Michael Moore
Release Year: 2009
Argument: The movie is structured around a very humanist and socialist perspective of those members of our society that are being abused by corporations. The argument for the movie really is that corporations and banking have infiltrated government, not just through lobbying, and when combined with complex strategies for manipulating credit and . The same people, that for the majority of their lives have held positions on boards of directors for large multinational companies, are being placed in pubic office by elected officials with conflicting interest. What results is the government gives corporations rights similar to that of an individual, as established by the US Constitution, and makes it possible for corporations to push around consumers and employees due to the failures of our legal and banking systems.
Problems: There are no direct environmental concerns that are drawn out in this film, however these issues are probably the key element to why change at the scale required is failing. The film gives a great deal of time to the economic crash caused by defunct loans. However, what they attempt to draw out is that while people's lives and homes are being destroyed by bankruptcy, banks have been running money through a variety of apparently legal, because the regulators are economists and part of big business, lending schemes. But again the human factor was really stressed in this film. Sully Sulenburg, the media pronounced American Hero after landing his US Airways jet safely in the Hudson, used his new fame to bring to light the poor treatment of pilots in the aviation industry. The system takes advantage of what an individual loves to do as a career, giving pilots approximately 20,000 dollars a year in salary. This suggests that the mantra repeated to children in America that “you can do whatever you want to do” and “do something you love” is actually not the reality. Another outrageous issue brought up is the purchasing of life insurance policies by companies for their employees. An example is Paul Smith, an employee of Walmart whose wife, also an entry level employee of Walmart, died leaving the family with 100,000 in medical and funeral expenses. Smith then discovered Walmart had taken a policy out on his wife for 81,000 dollars and offered none of it to the family.
Persuasive: Moore appears to be an excellent investigative reporter and strings together a variety of topics very fluidly and in a well timed manner. I thought the pace of the movie was excellent, as part of these films is about letting information sink in and affect the viewer. The beginning was filled with very moving personal issues and as the movie progressed the scale of topics grew, moving into specific coroporate and banking strategies and then wrapping up the whole movie with the failure of government. Specifically I was shocked by a part of the movie which describes a memo distributed through the ranks of Citibank which describes our nation as that of a plutonomy. Apparently Citibank had estimated that only 1% of America owned the majority of the countries wealth, but that 95% were in the lower class after taking into account loans and mortgages. This meant that the booming American middle class, of which advertising would have us suggest is still alive and well only belongs to 4% of the population.
Not Compelled: While Moore's reporting and material collaging is excellent, his antics don't fit within the context of the film. They are so childish and pointless that they undermine the criticality of the message. Also, while the stories in the beginning of the film are quite touching and unbelievable, the individuals shown are clearly depicted as victims. But, there is a certain amount of individual responsibility in these issues that question how they got into that situation that isn't addressed.
Audience: I thought that this film was geared towards the general American public. It was not at all highly technical, and really was attempting to grasp hold of the attention of that lower class that was single out in the Citibank document as the people who have a majority voice and can vote for change. The film doesn't address the actual issues of voting that prevent people wrapped up in these detrimental systems from actually getting to the polls, which would be an interesting topic of discussion. I believe the film was supposed to enhance already growing suspicions that individuals had, and the theories being posed are just so unbelievable that many would pass it off as false or slander.
Enhancement: As I described earlier, the film was less of a direct environmental action film and more of a film attempting to pull out issues of humanity that are necessary to the movement. If a country or society cannot live together and have a general respect amongst our own kind, how are we supposed to tackle the problems facing the environment. What could have been added was some sort of mention of how climate change was being influenced by these poor practices.
Intervention: The film really only acts as a call to attention and doesn't offer any really solid guidance. The general theme that remains at the end is that the elite are scared by the prospect of the masses of lower class individuals being able to vote and actually push responsible politicians through to responsible positions. There is a major issue with this though in that there are so many societal pressures against voting that it makes it impossible for many lower class families to actually participate in decision making. Voting day is supposed to be an essential point for critical decision making for the future of our country but it isn't treated as such. Instead of treating it as a federal holiday, where we all voice our concerns and celebrate the nation in that way, we go about our busy corporate driven lives probably purchasing more non-essential goods in that single day than votes cast. It is the same reason why the “vote by what you buy” technique doesn't actually function because lower income families are too busy working to get minimum amounts of money to 1) actually afford good food and products and 2) put energy into cooking with them. Perhaps election day should be a celebrated event by the country, but not in the way we commercialize and celebrate the nation's “birthday.” This would require all schools, government, and businesses to close allowing everyone to go vote, but also build community participation back into the actual day.
Additional Info:
1] I was primarily shocked in this film by the Citibank memo that was released describing the country as a Plutonomy. I found the article and read through it and it's something that everyone should read. Specifically of interest to me were the blatant admittance to doing detrimental run-around schemes to create complex essentially laundering schemes. “Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist-friendly cooperative governments, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting
inventions.” View the entire document below.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34641013/Plutonomy
2] I also became interested in the history of election day and discovered a major flaw that has not been accounted for in the voting procedures over the centuries, since industrialization. Voting in America was established and conducted through the first 100 years of the country's existence by an agrarian society. They were self-sufficient communities that were self operational and voting required often a full day or more's travel. It was a major amount of effort to participate in the system which has been lost as corporations and our economic system now locks people into the working day, making it difficult to actually participate on a random day in November, also one of the busiest times for seasonal shopping preparations.